Senators, Hillary Miss The Point at Hearing

During the entire farce of the Senate hearing on Benghazi, nobody mentioned the words video, film or movie. Or the word cover-up. It would be like covering a moon shot without mentioning the word space.

Reality to the Senate: The only reason for the hearing was to understand the decision to cover-up the Benghazi killings by pretending it was a demonstration gone awry. It was not to decide how to avoid these situations in the future or to ask about State Department procedures. We just re-elected a president who won, in part, by deliberately deceiving us about a terror attack on Sept. 11, 2012, the eleventh anniversary of the original attack. He pretended that the violence was connected to a video, and it was not. That is what these hearings should have been about.

Instead, they were about everything but.

It wasn’t until Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) in the House hearing — after three hours of Capitol Hill testimony — that anyone even mentioned the film or the video. To his credit, Rohrabacher asked the question squarely and to her discredit, Hillary ducked it.

When Senator Jeff Flake and John McCain got closer to the issue of the cover-up — without addressing it directly — Hillary flared and asked, “What difference does it make?” It makes quite a difference. Tony Blair was forced out of office because he “sexed up” a memo about Saddam’s WMD capabilities. If President Obama blamed the attack in Libya on a film, knowing that it was not a demonstration but a planned terrorist attack, and did so two months before an election, that is an impeachable offense. That’s what difference it makes.

But, even within the foul lines of the softball questions she was asked, Hillary’s replies were evasive.

Her best, which deserves a place in history, was, when asked if she knew of the twenty previous attacks in Benghazi she replied, “I was aware of those that were brought to my attention.”

She said she was “not involved in the talking points” White House spokespeople used to describe the attack. But then she admitted her staff was. So she was involved.

She pleaded a lack of capability to stem the attack. But in an age of supersonic planes, drones and cruise missiles, can she really maintain that we had no military assets to bring to bear? The truth is that Obama wanted to keep our footprint in Libya light so as not to evoke their — and his own — dismal memories of European and Western colonialism with a robust military presence. It was political correctness, not a lack of military assets, which made it impossible to save our ambassador’s life.

And then there was the phone that never rang. Pressed by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on why she didn’t just call the men who returned from Benghazi to find out what happened, she claimed not to want to interfere with an ongoing investigation. Is there anyone who believes that? Isn’t it more likely that she didn’t want to know the truth so that she didn’t have to embarrass her president by contradicting him?

Why didn’t she talk with the Assessment Review Board investigating the episode? Because she had no knowledge of the security issues. It’s not her affair! That’s like a Secretary of Defense saying he didn’t know about the military situation. She’s Secretary of State. That’s what her job is about.

President Obama got away with a massive cover-up pure and simple and his escape was evident in the pathetic questioning and evasive answers in the Hillary Clinton testimony.